News from the trustees
Our Board of trustees continues to meet online to prioritise its actions and keep in touch with its partner programmes. Our extended Zoom session with Bayan staff in Honduras on 27 July brought home their challenges and sterling efforts in support of their community bank members around the country. Similarly SSF and MDC staff are doing all they can to stay in touch with their schools and kindergartens, using WhatsApp groups in some cases to share health advice. BASED UK will respond to requests from the respective programmes for support with more widespread and sustainable communications with their stakeholders where viable and needed.
We are very happy to announce our Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Saturday 19th September 2020 from 11am to 1pm via Zoom (link to be shared). Staff from SSF will be joining live and the Bayan and MDC projects will be sharing recorded video or audio messages due to their significant time zone difference. To register for our AGM, please email baseduk@gmail.com or contact us via Facebook Messenger and we will monitor the numbers and devices attending. We look forward to seeing you!
|
Policy Highlights
With the recent merger of the UK Government's Foreign & Commonwealth Office with the Department for International Development, a new department – the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – will be established in early September and will be led by the Foreign Secretary. The merger brings together policy on development and diplomacy and may signal new directions in the UK Government's international development focus.
Freedom of religion and belief is a feature of recent UK development efforts, ensuring funded policies and programmes are sensitive and responsive to inequalities on the ground of religion or belief.
In addition, in February 2020 the US Government launched the Religious Freedom Alliance which the UK and other countries decided to join.
The Bahá'í International Community has stated in this context: 'Working at the community level, Bahá’ís around the world are striving to build capacity on larger and larger scales, enabling people everywhere to become protagonists of development. Central to these efforts is the principle that humanity is but one people. Within such a context, development ceases to be something one group of people does for the benefit of another. Instead, all individuals, whether materially rich or poor, young or old, man or woman, engage in a common enterprise of development. All work shoulder to shoulder to contribute to the well-being of the whole'.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
